In which my post gets frisked

Emily from the deli came round for dinner on Friday night. She is one of the few locals from Dulverton who has bothered to be welcoming – she said hello to me on my very first day here – and now we have become quite close. As we sat eating dinner, the three collies (they are a bit like the three tenors, only less musical and much naughtier) started climbing on to the table.

The new puppy, who I have named Mini Puppy, which has transmogrified into Minnie Driver or just plain Minnie, has now learnt to snatch the fork from my mouth and make off with it and circle the room. Honestly, when I give them all their night-night Bonio, it’s chaos.

They walk all over me, literally. Gracie (Tracie) is still not dry at night, even though she is now six months old. I have almost lost the will to live. I don’t think she has any concept of inside and outside, probably because it is so cold in my house.

I was late getting dinner ready because the horses had all gone mad. Lizzie’s new trick is to crush me against the fence as she pushes past to gallop into a new field. Following her lead, they had all escaped into the top field, which is not yet safe for them to be in: I am having a dry surface put down around the gate and the water trough so that we don’t get too much mud when the rain comes, but the sand was still in great big piles.

She asked if Nic had told me about the incident in the Post Office. ‘No,’ I said, coming over all cold. ‘What happened?’

They were all bucking and squealing, and Nic and I just couldn’t catch them. Too exhausted to tramp back to the tack room for a lead rope, Nic simply reached under her top and whipped off her bra. She then tried to secure it around Benji’s neck, but I think the pink frightened him.

Anyway, sitting in front of the log fire, Emily asked me if I regretted moving here and I said that finding Michael had made it all worth it. She asked if Nic had told me about the incident in the Post Office in Dulverton. This is a place I have used a lot since moving down here, and I have always found the man who runs it really friendly. ‘No,’ I said, coming over all cold. ‘What happened?’

‘Well,’ Emily said, ‘I went in there to post your birthday present and he looked at the name on the package and said, “Oh, it’s to her, is it? I don’t know if I am going to process it.” And then he started trying to bend it in two, tapping it and saying, “Will it break?”’

To be honest, I felt sick when she told me this. What on earth have I done to make people so aggressive and hostile? Don’t Post Office owners sign some sort of oath, like doctors?

When I went on Woman’s Hour not long ago to face my main adversary, a local woman called Jane Alexander who accused me, on air, of ‘not saying hello when I smiled at you in the wine bar’ – I mean, come on, you would think we were both eight years old, finding our feet in the playground – she had complained I had once written that the locals are smelly, which is a downright lie. I have written that I am smelly, many times, but not that other people are.

I thought people who worked in Post Offices, along with local councillors, like the one who dressed up as me in a black wig, clasping a tin of Illy coffee at the town carnival, were supposed to be the pillars of the community, not the bullies, driving out those of us who inject money into the area, and employ only local people. I have been converting my ancient barn since March, which means there are never any fewer than half a dozen local men beavering away on my property.

I wonder if that councillor will get re-elected after he has driven me out and put so many families on the breadline.

I have decided to boycott Dulverton Post Office and drive the extra few miles to Bampton, a beautiful little village where, hopefully, I will find a warmer welcome. Trying to break a birthday present – what is wrong with these people?